Dr. Pence’s diagnosis

Dr. David Pence is a former draft resister who served a year in federal prison for his beliefs. He’s also my friend. Despite the personal sacrifice he made for for his stand against the war, David now simply says, “I am ashamed of my role in those not-so-glorious ’60s.” Tomorrow’s Minneapolis Star Tribune carries David’s column: “Antiwar activists who got it wrong.”
David contrasts the support and respect he received as a resister in 1972 with the treatment accorded the returning veterans of combat in Vietnam whom John Kerry was simultaneously defaming. David places Kerry’s defamation of his fellow vets in the context of Kerry’s persistent misreading of the Cold War. David’s take on Kerry then and now is the most bitingly concise judgment rendered on Kerry to date: “I honor John Kerry the solider. But in this time of war, we must repudiate his disgraceful depiction of the American solider in Vietnam, his mistaken understanding of the Cold War, and his equivocation in our present war.”